The next-generation networks supporting multimedia services (such as IP telephony or IP TV) demand mechanisms for the allocation and partitioning of a mutli-type network resources (such as bandwidth, Internet Protocol Addresses, physical circuits, or MPLS label-switched paths) among the application- and system processes running in the distributed environment.
There has been much effort spent in the industry on various Quality-of-Service (QoS) protocols (such as the IETF Resource reSerVation Protocol [RSVP] and DIFFerentiated SERVices [DIFFSERV] and architectures (such as ITU-T's Next Generation Network Resource Allocation Control Function [RACF], which, combined with the resource allocation mechanisms developed in the field of Operating Systems and mechanisms for policy-driven controls, has been producing a rich set of service building blocks for resource reservation.
Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, all these mechanisms assume one or another kind of a central mechanism to make a decision on whether a particular set of resources can be allocated to a given process. Specifically, the problem of partitioning a set of resources among processes has not been solved without invoking central control or mediation. The weaknesses of such central control are:                1. Existence of a single point of failure;        2. Necessity of maintaining a large amount of state information centrally;        3. Difficulties in adopting to the dynamic changes in the needs of processes; and        4. Naturally limited scalability        
Accordingly there is a need for alternate methodology that does not require a centralized control function for the partitioning and allocation of resources among processes.